This year is about getting our collective dreams in order, restoring the biosphere, the idea of well-being as opposed to economic growth, the idea of partnership and co-creation with fellow human beings, moving away from national boundaries and more towards what Schiller and Beethoven were saying in some of their work.

The opening track of the album, "Pole Shift", is about environmental concerns and the possibility and the need of a potentially rapid shifts in the relative positions of the geographic locations of the poles and the axis of rotation of the Earth.[2][6] This nine-minute track, which starts with a cascading symphony made up by electric bass guitar and synthesizers, is marked by Walker's guitar scaling and Coleman's mix of introspectively delivered verses and dark chorus.[7] The second track, "Fema Camp", is a five-minute song with tribal rhythms and incendiary vocals that was inspired by the prison-like facilities built around the United States by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that could be used during martial law for the internment of citizens who are deemed a threat to U.S. national security.[2][3][7]

'Rapture' is the way I perceive a Killing Joke concert – it's a spiritual experience for myself to get into that state of grace... music is the theme of mantra. I'm not into organized religion at all, but I've always liked what Fela Kuti did in Nigeria, playing music like it was a temple. Maybe we will evolve into a time where we will be performing for ritualistic and spiritual reasons alone and not for monetary reasons?

"Rapture", the third track on the album and the first song that was made available for free listening, is Coleman's vision of Killing Joke's concerts, comparing them to a spiritual experience. The song, arranged in the industrial metal music style of their 2006's album Hosannas from the Basements of Hell, was inspired by Fela Kuti and his Kalakuta Republiccommune in Nigeria.[2][6][3] The fourth track, "Colony Collapse", deals with the current global situation and its prospects in the near future.[2][3] "Corporate Elect", the fifth track on the album, is about the greed in the business world whose rules are defined by the top corporations.[2][6][4][3] The seventh track, "Primobile", is a self-referential piece about the band's members internal interactions. Both "Primobile" and "Corporate Elect" are in the industrial endeavor of reuniting a more direct punk and metalcrossover.[7]

The album cover was designed by graphic artist and Killing Joke's long-time collaborator Mike Coles.[2] It depicts the profile of a skull and a machine both suspended in the air, and a devastated landscape in the background.

A track from the album, "Rapture", was made available for listening in February 2012.[2] The music video for "In Cythera", the first single from the album, was uploaded to the Killing Joke Vevo YouTube channel on 6 March.[9] The single itself was made available to purchase on 19 March as a limited and numbered 12″ coloured vinyl, and as a CD featuring "Penny Drops" as an exclusive and unreleased track.[10]

MMXII was released as a CD, a double coloured vinyl and as a downloadable Internet album via iTunes with "New Uprising" as an exclusive track on 2 April through the UK subsidiary of record label Spinefarm, and was distributed worldwide via Universal Music Group. It reached number 44 in the UK Albums Chart.[11] It was preceded by a UK tour and followed by a European tour.

MMXII was very well received by critics. Tom Bryant in the March issue of the UK-based music magazine Kerrang! rated MMXII described it as an "[a]pocalyptic death disco from seminal post-punks".[13] British magazine Classic Rock in its March issue gave the album a rating of 9 out of 10, stating that "[i]t's the end of the world as we know it. But what a way to go."[12]

The music website Sputnikmusic described it as "an end-of-times album full of carnage, disarray, paranoia... and just a little bit of hope", depicting MMXII as an album that "marks one of Killing Joke's greatest achievements, dating all the way back to their inception in 1978."[16] Dom Gourlay of the UK-based music webzineDrowned in Sound wrote: "[t]he sound of a band still in their creative prime, MMXII is everything Killing Joke have proclaimed themselves to be these past three-and-a-half decades, and fifteen albums on is just as incisive and coarse as their debut."[7]